This summer, I watched with my children the World War II drama War and Remembrance. I wanted them to know something about the worldwide cataclysm that shaped our world. Herman Wouk's saga of one fictitious family's experience of that very real war was the best way to introduce that knowledge. The clash of global forces would be too big a picture for them to relate to directly. But the story of a few particular people grabbed their interest.

It is not only kids who are like that. I call this the "kid-in-the-well phenomenon." That refers to the way a whole nation will rivet its attention on the fate of a single child trapped in a well or a mine-shaft, while that same nation ignores conditions that endanger the lives of tens of thousands of children. When the kid-in-the-well gets rescued, as did that little girl in Texas a couple of years ago, she gets Teddy Bears and get-well cards from all over the country, as well as attention on prime time TV. But when a few thousand more babies die because the government stops providing nutritional help to pregnant women and infants living in poverty, it doesn't even register on our screens.

It makes one wonder if we human beings are in way over our heads. We are acting on a very large stage, but we tend to look at our drama on a rather small screen.

Some of the major stories of this summer brought this problem into sharp focus.

First there was this "hostage crisis." What crisis? The hostage drama is good theater, but it is foolish to put it at center stage. This is what the president does when he returns suddenly to Washington because of new threats to the hostages and when he says that their safety is our top priority in the situation. This is what the news media do when they put all other issues on hold for two weeks to cover the "crisis." Not only does this reward the terrorists, by inflating the value of the few lives they hold in their hands. It also lets the little drama that fits on our screens --the kid-in-the-well-- overwhelm the larger geopolitical picture.

It is to our credit that we regard every human life as sacred. But a great power with a quarter of a billion people to protect and important responsibilities to others as well must keep a half dozen lives in perspective. Seven years ago we thought our interests in Lebanon important enough to send the Marines, and over two hundred of them came back in coffins. To protect what we called vital interests in the Persian Gulf, we put thousands of sailors in harm's way a couple years ago, and a few dozen of them paid with their lives.

Those with responsibility for the security of millions sometimes have to put a few lives in jeopardy. Letting the hostage tail wag the national security dog makes good TV but lousy policy.

Then there was the furor over the flag-burning issue. The Supreme Court said the burning of the American flag was a form of speech protected by the Constitution. In the wake of the decision, a movement arose to amend the Constitution solely to protect the flag. Polls showed that this idea had the support of a majority of the American people, and the president launched an initiative.

This is like using a cannon to shoot a mosquito. Let us grant that burning our nation's flag is deeply offensive. Is there a shred of evidence that granting people the right to be obnoxious in that way endangers our national well-being? If the Republic can survive two centuries of Americans being free to blaspheme against our national ideals, have we anything to fear from freedom to desecrate our national symbols? And even if there were some small danger, how does that weigh against the dangers of tinkering with the Bill of Rights?

But the burning of the flag is a small event that plays well on our screens. By contrast, the democratic tradition of tolerance and liberty for which that flag stands is less easily rendered visible to us.

And finally there was the brouhaha about some works of art --considered pornographic by many-- that had been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). These were the homoerotic photographs by one artist, whose exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington was cancelled under pressure, and the picture by another artist of a crucifix submerged in the artist's urine.

Let us grant the critics all their condemnations of these works --that they are tasteless, disgusting, etc. Should taxpayers get upset to discover that works repugnant to a majority of them enjoyed federal support? Do these sensational cases warrant, as some national leaders argued, the intrusion of Congress into the affairs of the NEA?

The big picture shows that the NEA has given out tens of thousands of grants. Of these, the tiniest handful has proven controversial in this way-- about one percent of one percent of all grants. To the extent that it is the Endowment's responsibility to respect mainstream sensibilities, it has been overwhelmingly successful. And without requiring the kind of direct political involvement that would undermine the integrity of federal support for the arts.

But the image of these exceptions ignites many people's imaginations in a way that an idea like "the integrity of the federal program in the arts" cannot. Transfixed by the picture on our small screens, we can stampede toward unwise policy.

Ten thousand years ago, we human beings lived in small clans and wandered a limited terrain. The small picture could capture our world. In the civilization we have created, we now make decisions that have global impact and will reverberate for generations to come. We'd better find a way to make the big picture come alive in our minds, or else it may fall apart in the world around us.

Andrew Bard Schmookler's most recent book is Sowings and Reapings: The Cycling of Good and Evil in the Human System.